Salmon fishing

Back a-leaping

Joy for fly-casters

THE salmon is one of nature's great mysteries. How does it manage to swim down its river of birth to roam across thousands of miles of ocean and then find its way back to the same river to begin the reproductive cycle all over again? Never mind. Recently, anglers and river owners have been increasingly worried that fewer and fewer salmon have been travelling upriver. But this year, there is good news; salmon are back in bigger numbers than have been seen for some time.

Nobody is assuming that a 50-year decline in salmon stocks has at last been reversed. But Jeremy Read, director of the Atlantic Salmon Trust, a salmon conservation body, says he has been heartened by reports of big salmon runs coming from the Tyne at Newcastle to the Dee in north-east Scotland.

If there has been better fishing this year, the credit probably belongs to an Icelander, Orri Vigfusson. Ten years ago, he decided that the big problem was that salmon were being caught by trawlermen out at sea. On the basis that catching fish in rivers contributes a lot more to rural economies than does trawling, he persuaded various river owners and recently governments to put money into a fund to buy out the trawlermen.

“We try to help them find alternative fisheries and work for their business,” he says. He calculates that he has spent $10m in the past decade and has cut catching of salmon at sea by about 50%. He is not surprised by the news of good salmon numbers in Norway and Canada and in northern Spain, where rivers in Asturias have reported catches up by 68% on last year. “We always said it would take 8-12 years before results would show,” he says.

Mr Vigfusson is not finished yet. He is negotiating with Irish coastal net fishermen to buy them out. The Northern Ireland assembly has agreed to put £1.5m into a fund to buy out Ulster's salmon netsmen. Drift netters operating off north-east England are also in his sights; a pre-April ban on such fishing, ordered by the government, is thought to be one reason why spring runs of salmon were better in east coast rivers.

Other issues are still troubling anglers. In Scotland, their current bugbear is fish farming. Salmon kept in cages in sea lochs attract sea lice, which, if they attach themselves to a fish in sufficient numbers, will kill it. The caged fish can be kept clear of lice by regular doses of chemicals. But that does not help wild fish swimming past.

The anglers claim that the spread of fish farming along Scotland's west coast is the reason why the area's rivers yielded 64% less fish in 2000 than in the previous year. The decline along east coast rivers, where there are no farms, was only 9%. The farmers grudgingly accept that they might be part of the problem, but are reluctant to do anything. They claim that the biggest factor affecting salmon stocks is changes in ocean temperature which affect feeding grounds. But quite how this works is as big a mystery as how to hook them.